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My sister saw something on several occasions throughout our lives... I never actually saw anything, only heard something extremely vividly.

Basically, one night everything was happening like usual. My mom was out with her friends watching some game, and my dad was watching a movie with my sister and I. It was a comedy, so we all went to bed laughing about it. I was lying in bed about half an hour after we were tucked in, reading a book. I heard somebody stomping down the hallway downstairs, and then full on sprinting up the stairs. I figured it was just my sister coming back from getting a drink or something, but I would have seen her leave her room because our doors are right beside each other, and the staircase is just around the corner. So then I figured it was just my mom coming back home and for some reason being extremely loud. The way my door is angled lets me see anybody who comes up the stairs, so I was watching and waiting as they seemed to be in quite a hurry. The footsteps were getting higher and higher up the stairs, but as soon as they got to the top, they completely stopped. There was nothing. My eyes were still totally fixed on the hallway as I got up to check who it was. I turned the corner and there was nobody. I immediately got covered head to toe with goosebumps, and tried to piece together what could have happened. Not even two seconds later I hear my sister screaming and she comes bolting out of her room with complete terror on her face. Without hesitating we run into our dad's room, where he is already standing up and asking what's wrong. My sister points back to her room crying, and says "There's a man!". My dad rushes into the hall, turns the light on, and then turns the light on in her room. He checks the closet and behind everything but doesn't find anything. Then he walks into my room and does the same, but still finds nothing. We spent the next 15 or so minutes holding his hand as he searched the rest of the house, flicking every single light on. He calls my mom to see if she had been home, but she says she's still with her friends. I could even hear the loud bar atmosphere through the phone speaker. We all slept in my dad's room that night.

Over the course of the next 7 or so years, my sister had run out of her room crying about the same man in her room. She says he just stands there in the corner and watches her. She described him as a very tall man in a top hat and a trench coat, "like a detective" she said. Everything completely black. It was a couple years after that that I stumble upon what's known as the "Top Hat Demon", or the "Phantom Hat Man". It turns out it's an actual phenomenon. Every description and drawing is exactly what she described that day.

Weirdly, I always have the compulsion to move into the shadows. My wife thinks it’s weird that when we hear something we think could be a problem I’m out of bed and down the hallway with the lights off. I feel much more comfortable checking the house in the dark. I know it better than anyone walking through it without light would know it.

My friends and I made up a game when we were kids called ninja tag. It was basically hide and seek but with a twist and [TLDR] that was our favourite spot!

The seeker starts in the basement and works up through the house, when they spot a hider they call them out by name and their specific hiding spot - you can't just say "come out of the kitchen" assuming that someone is in the kitchen, you have to actually confirm you know who's under the sink to get them out. Like in the normal game, the seeker wins when everyone is found.

The hiders can win though - rather than just waiting to be found for the game to end - by tagging the seeker on the back, hence "ninja tag".

This encouraged hiders to get really creative. The seeker has an advantage in that they only have to see and name you to win, rather than tagging, but the hiders have numbers.

Hiders can hide together in a room and strategically lure the seeker to one while exposing their back to the other, but they also run the risk of letting the seeker get multiple easy outs by simply pivoting and finding all the hiders in succession.

Hiders can also move through the house as the seeker does, trying to get to rooms that have already been cleared so that the seeker will let their guard down if they walk by them repeatedly. But moving from one hiding spot to another is also risky, of course.

This meant that the best strategy for hiders was to get away from line of sight, either high up or on the floor, and be in a room where the seeker would have their back to you as they enter.

My friend's bathroom quickly became the favoured hiding spot because we could stand on the counter, pressed to the wall, and be hidden when the door opened and stopped against the counter, obscuring the view of whoever opened the door. The person entering can't see behind or reach above the door, but the person crouched on the counter can stand and reach over the open door to tag the person entering. Each of us would scream the first time we fell victim to that spot as a seeker. To open the bathroom door and instinctively want to throw open the shower, only to have a hand reach down from the ceiling in complete darkness and pat the back of your head. Nothing short of terrifying lol

Best thing you can do is pretend to sleep if you hear a prowler. Most of the time it’s a robbery and if they aren’t caught they will move on. But of course subtly call 911. But if they’re close try being still while plotting out a weapon.

which is why i said maybe it started as one, but now there's a witness and the criminals freedom/life is on the line. if a person is brazen enough to break into your home at night to steal your shit while you may or may not be inside, and then enter your bedroom where if you are home, are most definitely sleeping, they're not just going to finish robbing you and then leave because you stayed under the covers pretending to sleep.

Yeah I thought of that too. I think it was meant to prevent people from going out to investigate a noise and startling an intruder and making themselves a target. If thier in your room I would beat the fuck out of them and call 911.

I had/have his logic too, but apparently the thing about being stabbed is it doesn't really hurt immediately or for quite a while, so doing that is likely to just anger your attacker and they may try and succeed, to overpower the knife off you ...

When I was like 14 or so, I was babysitting some kids from church one night and we hear a loud bang in the backyard. We get up to look out the window but don't see anything. I look at them and they're frightened as hell looking to me for some sense of security. That's when I realize I'm like a grown up to them. They ask me, can't you go check it out. I said, shit, you go check it out. And made sure the door was locked.

I only "hide" under my blanket when I kinda get myself scared like by reading creepy things. However when I'm home alone and I hear a sound or catch movement from the corner of my eye I noticed I "freeze" and am focusing on trying to hear, or scan the room by moving my eyes only.

Turns out a lot of the stuff I catch moving from the corner of my eyes comes from lights and shadows mixed with where I was standing. I'm fortunate enough for the sounds to be one and done and within the realm of coincidence/explainable.

I do wonder what I'd do if something truly frightning did happen though a lot. I like to think I'd fight right off the bat, but honestly I believe running and baricading myself would be my first reaction.

Simple. All you gotta do is set up a bunch of cardboard stand ups and mannequins with an intricate pulley system and toy train set, while blasting “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree”. It’s been known to repel would-be burglars. Failing that, you can always set up a sadistic series of lethal booby traps throughout your house.

My son has seen him several times. I didn't know it was a phenomenon until recently. He would wake up at night and see the man standing in a corner in his room, on top of his toybox, staring at him, wearing a dark cloak and a tophat. Sometimes the clock was covering his head, IIRC.

He actually stood sortof in the corner, the toybox was in a corner of the room. Although, another time, he apparently was seen walking down the hall, stopped, looked at my son in his bed, who was wife awake and terrified (he didn't sleep well for a period of time surrounding these "visits) then walked away after a bit. The scary part was that he would just stand and stare. And my son would wake up and see him standing there, like who knows how long he was there, and he would stare back, barely able to breathe, then put his head under his blanket and try to go to sleep. He said he was too scared of the man to call for me when it was happening.

It's sad that your friend was too afraid of her parents to get help from them.

I'm reading this in the daytime now. Reading these at night nearly did me in.

This reminds me of the "shadow people" phenomenon, which often goes along with sleep paralysis. For a young, developing brain, it could be that he is (or was) in a wakeful sleep state. Why this produces things like shadow people and top hat men staring, I have no idea. And what it can indicate, I have no idea. People are weird and do weird things; developing brains do weird things. There's another thread in here about a guy, when he was a teen, who went and stood in the kitchen, felt he was being watched, returned to bed, only to find he had been standing in the kitchen for hours upon hours without realizing. Rather than something sinister or supernatural, it's probably just a brain thing.

Not sure if this is helpful in the least. I can't imagine, A) being a little boy and seeing this (would scare the crap out of me as an adult), B) being the parent and feeling helpless.

Logically speaking, all of this is caused by our human brains coming in and out of sleep states. Still about did me in reading the top hat man story in bed tho. The rest of this thread was ok, but that one really got to me. Eep.

Did you type all of that out for me??? Thank you, either way. It was really interesting to read.

I don't know if this will comfort you, or if it will just annoy you (like, "I typed all that out, and this fkr doesn't even believe me?")--but it sounds like a fairly standard paralysis/specter experience. Not only can they be triggered by leg cramps but by being in a place unfamiliar to you. Your brain fills in the details, and we have some human biology that gives the commonalities between the gaps that our brains fill. Humans are also good at seeking meaning, i.e. the carpet and history could be coincidence.

Of course, all that is just theory, too. We don't actually know for sure. For all we know, there could be a race of aliens or ghosts or whatever that sap our energy and make us unable to move, etc etc etc. That seems a little less likely than the sciency explanations, but the sciency explanations are just conjecture too!

I normally wouldn’t admit to this but because it’s your son who is experiencing it and I don’t want you to think it’s just crazy talk, I just wanted to say that I’ve had several experiences with this man in the hat as well.

When I was younger in the middle school years, I started dreaming of him. Frankly I would be scared to go back to sleep afterward when I would wake up from it. In the dream, I would feel this unexplainable...horrifying fear. He was always standing behind me in his hat and trench coat. He would just look at me intensely. Honestly. I thought it was just me having nightmares, but as an adult I have found people all across the world have seen this figure in some way or another.

Some people think it’s a demon. I don’t freaking know. It could be sleep paralysis! All I know is that the fear is beyond anything anyone should feel.

I am lucky enough to have never experienced anything like this. Even if you can move, and even if it's not sleep paralysis, it is probably still just some kind of confusion of the brain between sleep state and wake state. I don't know if that's any consolation. The fact that humans often all see similar things has to do with our similar brains.

A little late to the party here but I just wanted to add my encounter as well. I used to see him in a house I lived in when I was 5-10 (24 now). I only saw him walk by the doorway which leads into the hallway while I was in the living room on the couch. I saw him MANY times and I’d only ever see him walk by never stand and stare at me. I’ll also add I only ever saw him in that house never saw him again after we moved.

The description of a detective was spot on. My version was always a black hat and a tan long trench coat type deal.

I didn’t realize this was a huge thing until this year when I joined reddit. It still gives me chills just thinking about it, i just showed my husband this thread because I’m 100% sure he thinks I’m full of shit.

I saw the hat man when I was 3. He was just stood there watching me until I screamed the house down. He followed my dad and I downstairs but my dad didn’t see him. He faded out on the stairs. If it was a dream or night terror, it was bloody vivid!

in all actuality its probably some weird psychological phenomenon that served some purpose at some point during human evolution. or a side effect of how our brains developed. but until we figure out what it is, its shadow people.

Quite possibly. Like how we think about happy/sad when we hear the major or minor key in music. But it’s so specific. Why not a shadow dog in a hat? Or a shadow spider? It just seems so specific.

It’s the same as the image of the grey alien... why so specific an image? And if it were just popular culture, kids wouldn’t necessarily see the same thing. Actual death experiences (ADEs) are the same... many familiar features which you’d not expect children to experience, certainly compared to adults.

I was taking a history course on the native people in my area and studying one book written by one of the early anthropologists to the area who recorded local myths and legend from elders. There was one legend about small grey men with large eyes who were known to occasionally visit and that the legend said they were best to be avoided.

It was one of the books by James Teit, I think on the Thompson Indians, but it has been a good decade since I read it and we covered a couple sources from him, but, I think a lot of his stuff is digitized and free online if you're curious enough.

Because a shadow human will scare you more then a shadow dog. A human figure in your house probably has intent to harm you. A ghost dog would be creepy but I wouldn’t think it’s coming to terrorize me.

So, I had the flu a few years ago and for me, while things like Dayquil work, I'm a bit more comfortable with Benadryl to dry things out and get rid of the symptoms. Thing is, I had nearly a whole case of cold Gatorade next to my bed and a whole bottle of little pink pills and a serious fever that had me fairly delusional.

I'd nap for an hour or two, notice the flu symptoms, recall that my plan was to take a pill or two every few (like, every four) hours, then have some gatorade and go back to bed.

After a half day of this and who knows how many pills, I started noticing spiders everywhere... which was a little concerning, but I'm mostly okay with spiders and I think my fever was around 103F, so I didn't care.

A few more hours go by and there's spiders everywhere and they're all huge and shadowy and crawing in and out of my walls and they're on the bed and I look down and see one walking into my arm.

At this time, my thought was, "I should probably buy bug spray when I get better." My mind wasn't in a great place.

No later than 8 that night, I finally collapsed from exhaustion enough to stay asleep for the whole night and the spider pills stopped being so effective and the fever broke.

The next day, a bit before noon, I woke up and discovered that I'd nearly drained the bottle of Benadryl, having taken no less than twenty (and possibly more) in under 24 hours.

I'd be concerned at the damage that did to my internal organs, but they're already failing, so eh.

Ok, so why a man and not a dog? I mean, humans are generally not afraid of humans, whereas dogs...

Don't get me wrong, I'm with you, I'm sure this stuff is deeply embedded in the psyche, but it's fascinating that even small children can conjure up a man in a hat, rather than the shadow of a dog, or a cat or something.

Yeah I see "shadow cats" all the time. I've had cats almost my whole life so if I see any movement on the floor out of the corner of my eye my brain assumes it's a cat.

Although at one point I had one orange cat and one black cat at the same time who liked to sleep in my bed with me, and one night I was on my phone and I noticed there was the orange cat and the black cat and then another black cat by my feet. I nudged it with my foot under the blanket and it just got up and left, didn't look at me or anything. My actual black cat had a really distinct limp because he was super old and used to be a stray but the one that got up walked normally. I wasn't really scared I was just like "whose cat are you and how'd you get in here??"

Definitely had a night terror of a cat once, just sat by my (open) bedroom door and watched me for a bit. It reminded me of Snowball from the Simpsons, in that it was almost a cartoonised cat, and its not like Ive ever really watched Simpsons (so it wasnt like I fell asleep watching it or anything).

My brother used to get night terrors all the time, and saw a variety of different things, so it definitely does happen.

Feeling happy/sad when you hear a major or minor key in music isn't universal, it's mostly because you hear and associate this a lot in Western music. That's why music isn't a universal language, because it means different things in different cultures.

My sister woken up to ghosts watching her in her sleep countless times, starting when she was very young. She’s now almost thirty and still sees them. She doesn’t talk about it very often, but she recently became interested in going back to church, if that means anything to you.

Sounds like sleep paralysis. Freshman year in my college dorm I would get it every single day -- hands reaching out from inside my bed gripping my arms and legs, people running into my room screaming frantically, a man I can't see breathing on me and whispering gibberish into my ear. But as soon as I was able to move they would disappear. What your sister experienced is probably a similar thing, and they definitely emotionally feel like "dark entities" as described by other people. I have even had positive ones like hearing choir music accompanied by a certain supernatural warmth to the way the sun lit up the room.

But what we hallucinate during sleep paralysis, just like what we see in our dreams, is heavily influenced by our emotions and vice versa. I can see why experiences like this would make certain people more religious but at the same time a lot of the things I experienced seem influenced by tropes and things that were already part of my psyche in some way. It's not very different from good and bad dreams, only with sleep paralysis they're hallucinations projected onto reality since your vision is working while your mind is still dreaming.

You should tell your sister about sleep paralysis because in my non-professional opinion it sounds a lot like what I have experienced. If she is unable to move during these experiences I don't think there is much else it could really be.

Yeah I think it is influenced by our psyche. I had sleep paralysis several times and only once I remember having hallucinated (I heard the sound of a large crowd running and yelling from gunshots). My sister, I guess because she is a lot more emotional than me, had stronger hallucinations, seeing and hearing things, even thought she did not suffered from dream paralysis as much as I have.
Her favorite is this one time where she saw a woman inside her room holding a microphone and singing. I guess that's kinda nice comparing to what other people experience, though.

I think people suffering from depression and other mental conditions may have stronger hallucinations, as well as people going through some tough times, stress, etc.

My question exactly. I’m not sure I buy the idea that it’s embedded deep in the human psyche, or that it’s just a common shape that is ominous. It seems far too specific. Sure, a shadowy figure, but with a hat?

But then, the human brain is a mysterious place looking for patterns in everything. I dunno, but as a phenomenon witnessed by a lot of people, it’s fascinating.

Iirc I've never seen the top hat man. As I read this story, it did remind me of the neighborhood watch sign out in the streets- perhaps that's what triggers this ?

As a child I seen other figures- one that I vividly remember is seeing a really tall chunky mummy out in my patio. It would sit on this old chair and briefly stand up. I would also see other shadows, but never this top hat guy. Hmm..

It wasn't a top hat... more like a trilby. And it was a silhouette rather than an actual figure. Like a shadow but with no one casting it. I was 3 when I saw it. Personally, I think this is probably a "between awake and asleep" kind of thing. Where the brain is confusing real life with a dream. But for 3 years old, it was terrifying.

Fuck man, I lived in a supposedly haunted complex when I was very young and when I was about 4 I saw the shadow of a man in what looked like a top hat and a trench coat walk across the hallway wall from the bathroom while I was bathing. My mom had just stepped out and I screamed and she ran back in but assured me it was just my imagination.

I think I saw one of those things a year or two ago. I was very tired and fell asleep. After some minutes I woke up with that thing in front of my eyes. I only saw it for about a second or two. I remember it was human shaped, it was looking like a shadow, wasn't having any hat and was very short or it was sitting on its knees. If you can tell me more about them I would like to know.

Sleep paralysis likely. As you fall asleep your brain paralyzes you and begins to secrete the chemicals that cause you to dream and stuff. If this process is interrupted abruptly, you can wake up and be paralyzed but also see some trippy shit.

Shout out to your dad for taking your sister seriously. I'm sure he assuming there was an actual man, not a ghost, but wayyyy too many adults would have told you both to go back to bed and not worry about it.

I actually remember during an episode of Ghost Hunters, Jason Hawes speaks about how he had investigated several cases across the states, all involving the hat man. It sounded pretty spooky, basically this hat man appears to people and sort of beckons them, like indicating for them to follow him with his finger. Creepy.

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Not saying or indicating that its definitely a ghost, but it is definitely a shared phenomenon that many people have reported seeing.

My friend and I used to blame all of our problems on something similar back in kindergarten, we called him Mr nobody. I have no idea where we got the idea for him but your story reminded me about it. but the description we had of him was pretty much the same, a tall man in a trench coat with a fedora.

When my son was a baby, still 13 months, he would arrange his toy cars side by side in rows. My nephew did the same thing. Then I realized he is simulating a parking lot. At 13 months old. Kids can recognize things very young.

he's definitely not simulating a parking lot. my kid is a year and a half and lines up his toy jungle animals and unless he's been somewhere with a parking lot full of tigers and elephants and monkeys and shit, i'm pretty sure it's just another developmental phase of recognizing patterns - similar to those stacking cups & rings.

This is a good theory. As soon as you mentioned that sign I knew what you meant. I was wracking my brain for what kind of commonality all these kids would have, assuming they’re all North American. I figured it would have to be some kind of movie or TV show, but the sign fits very well.

Late to the thread but this is probably the answer. Guy in a cloak and top hat is like generic shady person archetype. Kids are conditioned to distrust men dressed like that through cartoons and signs like that. So it would make sense that their brains would conjure this up.

My old room was positioned at the end of the hall but the door left like 6 inches to the end of the hall where someone could stand and be out of my view from my bed and I remember one night seeing a shadowy figure cross the doorway and never cross back I was so scared I tried to stay awake as long as possible not taking my eyes off the corner, but I was like 6 or 7 and my brother shared a room with me and I didn't want to sound like a baby so I just tried to fall asleep, I don't remember feeling well rested the next morning

I didn’t know this was a phenomenon until now. I used to see him all the time when I was kid.. I was never really afraid of him because there was more creepy things that went on in my house than that. Kind of just got used to him (mind you it was never when I was sleeping, I’d be in the kitchen for example and he would just walk through it and then disappear)

I’ve never seen him move, nor have I seen him at night. But just as you said, he wasn’t scary to me. He never put off a negative vibe. Just watching. When I’d see him, I would think to myself, “oh, it’s the shadow man again” and continue on with what I was doing.

Its pretty short but basically when I was around 8/9 years old, everyone in my family would wake up with weird scratches or they’d randomly appear. My uncle living with us at the time woke up to his shoulder just covered in scratches and cuts, both my parents woke up with scratches on their arm as if someone just dragged their nails down their skin. I was in the bath and suddenly a cut in the shape of a crescent was on my leg, it freaked me out so much because it wasn’t there before and I felt this sense of something watching me and feeling of impending doom. I looked up and I swear there was a face staring back at me for a split second and I noped out of there so fast.

I remember one night my mom could feel something sinister watching us and she told it to leave us alone and to stop terrorizing and hurting us and nothing else ever happened since then. Thats also when I stopped seeing the guy in the top hat so I’m not sure if it was related.

We had a bunch of weird things happen that seemed to make no sense. We would have scratches appear on the opposite side of the wall, like something from inside the wall had pushed the wall out from the inside. My mother saw a floating glowing sword in her bedroom. I saw a ball of light fly through several walls and ricochet off the glass windows. We would find birds dead on the property on a regular basis and the number of albino animals we saw was way above normal. I saw a mutated mouselike creature with no eyes (elongated head and empty sockets) running around the backyard several times. I used a security camera to look into the roof cavity after hearing a lot of noise up there and saw a furry thing with a bowler hat that ran off after a few seconds. Plus a whole lot of little stuff like things going missing, weird dreams, teleporting ants, suddenly being scared of certain areas of the house. It was just really bizarre and it felt like I was living in a B-list horror film.

Oh he/she is definitely real, I used to be visited yearly, usually around July. The last time it happened (about 10 years ago), I guess I was feeling bold or crazy, but my brother owns a top hat, and it was on the ground next to me, so I put it on...
And then it seemed like he slowly began to fade away into the darkness. Weirdly enough I’d never felt threatened by its presence, and I’m glad I could give it peace

I actually caught something similar to this on camera and still kick myself that I wasn't filming at the time. I lived in a house with some really REALLY weird things going on in it, but it never felt haunted, just... occupied? I had been hearing some really weird sounds in the roof for a few weeks so I got an old night vision security camera, tied it to a broomstick and poked it up into the roof cavity to see if there was anything up there. Switched it on and right in the corner, directly above my bed it looked like there was a large pile of rugs/wool/insulation and the weirdest thing was it had a bowler hat on top of it. I think, "well it must just be a possum that is using that pile for a nest, I'll have to get up there and get rid of it." and pan the camera around having a look for other signs of animals. Suddenly there is a massive scraping noise from the roof in the direction of my bedroom, I tilt the camera back, and the pile is just gone. Nothing at all in the corner of the house. Scariest thing is that wasn't even close to the weirdest thing that happened in the house. I moved a few months after that and I actually created this Reddit account to see if anyone had experienced anything similar.

Wow, my mum was really sick as a child and spent time in and out of hospital. She said that sometimes she'd see a man at the end of her bed, she described him as a wizard, but he wore a top hat. Whenever she saw him she knew she was going to get worse and end up in hospital again. She always maintained that he was some sort of friendly spirit, but I wondered why she didn't think he was malevolent since her sickness would get worse after his visits. I'm only hearing about the top hat demon now, sounds like our culprit.

I've seen him many times, starting from age 7. For me, however, my first encounter was in the daytime. Nowadays, he still freaks the shit out of me, but i just close my eyes and relax for 10 minutes amd hell be gone. It feels so weird to see other people talk about this.

This is 100% true. I often hear him “replaying my thoughts” in my own head if that makes any sense. It’s like he comes to collect memories from children. Bc whenever I hear him “replaying my thoughts” I’ll snap out of it and see him in the corner of my eye. The second I dart my eyes towards him, he disappears.

I’ve never heard him speak nor seen him move. He just stands there and then disappears. He also has never made me feel scared or threatened. I’ve seen him maybe 8 times, possibly upto a dozen and only when I’m alone. Weird.

I saw something like that twice before, when I was 15. I was sleeping in my moms room, she had just turned off her bedside lamp and fallen asleep immediately. I know I wasn’t dreaming because i usually take a good 30 minutes to fall asleep. He was standing by the bedroom door, tall and dark, unmoving. He then walked slowly to the foot of the bed and just stood there watching us. I was absolutely petrified I couldn’t even scream, I just didn’t want to move. It wasn’t sleep paralysis because I wasn’t even trying to move, because I didn’t want it to know I was awake. It eventually moved around to my moms side of the bed and bent over her face, sniffing her. Then it moved around again and went to my side, I closed my eyes to appear as if I were asleep, but when I felt it close to me I couldn’t help myself and let out a loud scream and started to scoot away from the edge and towards my mom. That woke her up, but I could still feel him near so I just said “there’s someone in the room!” And she turned on the light immediately. By then he was gone, Mom was mad because she thought I was having a nightmare due to watching a scary movie (I hadn’t watched one in a while) so she just told me to go back to sleep. The second time I saw him I was walking from my bathroom to my room and I saw a man standing outside my parents bedroom. He was close to the door, as if he were speaking to it. I just ran to my room and locked the door, keeping my lights on. I wasn’t able to sleep that night.

On both instances he was a solid figure. But it seemed as if he were fully made by black material. Like an outline but not a shadow. In my parents room there’s often light from the busy street outside, cars or lamps or other things. When he was there the light would shine on the walls or furniture, illuminating everything but him. I’m the hallway it was the same way, it was as if he was made out of shadows, very fucking solid shadows. I’m just terrified of him and never want to see him again.

It surprises me that he moved for you and other commenters. He has never moved for me. He just stood there and would disappear when I would try to look at him. But also, like you said, he wasn’t a shadow. He was a figure of a man, just completely black. Like absorbing light or black velvet or something. It definitely was not a shadow casted someone. It was the absence of light??? I guess. I’m not really sure.

I'm feeling a little shell-shocked reading all of you having the same experience as me, this one is the closest description though. He isn't a shadow, he is shadows.

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When I was 16 I saw him through out the year, he would always be about 5 feet away from the foot of my bed and would dissolve if I looked directly at him. The last time that I saw him he was standing directly at the foot of my bed, nearly touching my feet. He didn't dissolve when I looked at him. I stared at him in horror for what felt like forever (was probably only a few minutes) then finally mustered the courage to bolt out of bed. I refused to sleep on that floor of the house until I moved out for college.

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I eventually had to break down and tell my mom why I was sleeping on the couch every night. That's when she admitted to me that she felt a "heaviness" in my room when she would walk in there. I, thankfully, have not seen him since (16 years ago)

When I was little I was super creeped out by the burglar silhouette on the neighborhood watch signs. I would freak the hell out if I saw a “Top Hat Demon”. I really didn’t need to know that was a thing.

Man it was horrifying. We’d just gotten from work, it was like 3 am and we went out to smoke and let the dog out every night before we went to bed. We often kept chairs in the back yard. There’s no gate in that backyard either. The only way in is to exit through the Backdoor of the house. There’s a GIANT mango tree that covers the entire backyard and provides a nice shade but is a bit eerie when it’s windy and dark out. Similar to this night.

When we walked out it was dark, windy. It was chilly. One of the chairs had been pulled from his usual spot. It’s where he was sitting. The man was sitting FACING the back door like he was waiting for us with a top hat, old like detective clothing, eyes black as night, no facial expression but looking at us. Our dog, who was kept in a crate hadn’t peed in hours and was so spooked he immediately went back inside. Didn’t even pee.

I've seen shadow people twice, only on my girlfriend's house, Once it was just standing, watching us from the doorframe, but the second time was creepier, there were three of them around the bed, just staring at us. Both times I had to get up eyes closed and when I look again there is nothing. So you and your sister are not alone, It's more common than one thinks.

I’ve seen him before!!! Me and my parents shared a room at that time due to being poor, basically I woke up one night and saw that shadow figure (with the exact hat and trench coat, all black) in the middle of the room looking at my parents. I was scared shitless that I grabbed my blanket over my head, started crying and shouted to wake my parents up. I was so scared my teeth were shattering. I know what I saw, it was real.

I saw something like that when I was 7. Just watching TV with my parents when this tall shadow guy just waltzes through my kitchen wearing a trench coat and some kind a fedora. I just brushed it off until a couple years later some ghost hunting show was showing photos of shadow people and he was in one of them. Freaked me the hell out.

Just want to join the chorus of responses. I've seen the hat man too, very strange how common sightings are!
He appeared to me many times but I ever 2 most vividly. Once my mother and I were walking along a street in a busy shopping area and I saw a man in a brown trench coat and brown hat, face obscured, sitting down on the side of the path.

I walk 2 more steps,looked back and he had vanished.

Another time he walked past our kitchen window on the back verandah. It was so vivid I went outside to check, and of course he had vanished.

I don't believe in the supernatural, but it's certainly interesting that there are so many similar "sightings". Perhaps this is a western psychological phenomenon - the shadowy detective figure is pretty well ingrained in our psyches - I wonder what similar sightings happen in other cultures?

I’ve only ever seen him in the daytime. It’s not a top hat on the man I see. It’s more of a zorro hat. Wide brim, short on top and some type of long black cloak, or trench coat. Very tall, larger stature.
He has never made me feel threatened, fearful or scared though.

I was play wrestling with my bro. I rock bottomed him and we fell both look into the Hall way. He was just looking at us. It was like 1 pm. No light was entering so it wasn't a shadow. He was pitch black and was like in the middle of space. Not like a shadow that rests on whatever is being casted.

When we fell looking at the hallway I said "did you see that" he said it was witch but he was like 6 and didn't know better.

I've had the experience of seeing the top hat demon, as well. I was probably around 5 or 6 years old. I lived on a farm for free with my 2 siblings and my mother and father because we were homeless/jobless and an older gentleman, Shortie, let us stay there if we were to watch and care for the animals in his absence. That night for whatever reason we were all sharing the same room laying on blankets on the floor, we couldn't afford mattresses, and I was positioned between my mom and my dad. Some time in the middle of the night I woke up and I don't remember why I was just wide awake and very alert out of nowhere. I had no clue what time it was because this was 1999 and we were poor so we didn't have a cellphone or digital clocks at ease, we used regular clocks and I definitely couldn't read it, but while I was trying to get back to sleep I looked down to the corner near the doorway and he was just standing there staring at me. Being a decently bright child I immediately deduced it was just the shadow of the vacuum at the foot of the bed no reason to panic... Until it started moving. After the recent readings that I've done on the sightings of shadow people during sleep paralysis I really wanted to believe that was why I had seen it, that it couldn't possibly be some sort of entity, but I so distinctly remember sitting up and shaking my mom quietly to wake her up as he inched closer to our blankets that there was no way I was paralysed. I was also trying not to wake my dad because he was a very cruel man who would have beat me to wake him up in the middle of the night for something so stupid. I pleaded and shook my mom, but she is honestly the heaviest sleeper I know. I couldn't wake her up and he kept getting closer, so I closed my eyes as tight as I could and cried for him to go away and when I opened my eyes he wasn't there anymore. I definitely didn't get much sleep afterwards.

Usually it's not when I'm asleep, though. Most often he's in peripheral vision, or on the far sides of crowds. His hat's tall, but it always struck me as being like a crown more than like a top hat. It's dark metal, nearly black. His coat's trenchcoat like, but... older? I always got the impression that he's really old, but never could get him to talk to me.

I don't remember ever being freaked out by him. It's startling to see someone in your house, but I can't recall ever thinking anything more than "Oh, it's him again".

He seems to like standing in corners, and doorframes. In crowds, he's often watching someone else. I've never seen anyone walk through him or make an effort to move around him. He just seems to know where to stand to be out of the way.

I have also seen this same figure. Exactly how you describe it too, as a “detective” type. I was around 5 or 6 living at my grandparents house and woke up in the middle of the night with him standing in the doorway. He looked like he would walk towards me, sort of in flashes though. He would flash closer and closer until I closed my eyes and when I opened them he would be back in the doorway. I don’t know what to make of it, I’m not the type to believe in ghosts, but it was creepy as hell and I remember it vividly.

The hat man I see has his hat right below his belly button and above his thighs. He then usually comes into my room reads me a few article out of the New York Times and reads me a “where’s Waldo?” Book. Gives me a few Eskimo kisses and ends up falling asleep with me because I get super nervous and scared at night that I’ll see the hat man you guys are talking about.

I had my own very vivid experience with Hat Man, but he wasn't some shadow figure. I was alone in my old apartment, sleeping on a mattress on the floor at the time. I wake up, experiencing sleep paralysis I'm sure, to a well dressed old timey man with glasses and a mustache in a bowler looking hat crouching over me, staring directly at my face. When he sees I'm awake he said something like "that'll do just fine" before standing up. I felt the weight of his individual feet on the mattress as he stepped one leg over me and began to walk out the apartment. I was still paralyzed at this point as I heard him walk down the hallway, past the kitchen, open the door, close the door, lock the deadbolt from the outside and walk down the apartment stairs. At that point I was able to move.

He honestly had a benevolent look and attitude to him, like he was checking up on me, but wasn't supposed to let me see him. Like a zookeeper or something.